Thursday, 5 May 2016

Yesterday saw the release of CJEU judgments on the EU's Tobacco Products Directive (TPD) which should prove to anyone that the EU and its agencies are far from scrupulous and could even be deemed to be deliberately corrupt.

Remarkably, none of it is explicitly in the name of health. The EU has no mandate to set health policy and so all of the new laws in the Tobacco Products Directive have to masquerade as market harmonisation measures. But where is the harmony? Sweden keeps its exemption from the EU’s ban on smokeless tobacco (‘snus’). Countries which ban the sale of e-cigarettes, such as Finland, will not be encouraged to lift their prohibitions. Menthol cigarettes will be banned across the EU despite no member state seriously contemplating a ban of its own. Every country must have graphic warnings on fag packs making up 65 per cent of the surface area, but if countries want to go the whole hog and introduce their own ‘standardised packs’ they are free to do so.

It's a total crock, and serves only to show that the EU is a gaggle of regulators glad-handing other career pecksniffs to perpetuate a tax-funded merry-go-round to the benefit of nobody but themselves.

In the case of e-cigs, it's not just that there is no market harmonisation, but also that there is only one outcome for public health (as if they really care about that), and it is a net negative.

In the same week that the Royal College of Physicians joined Public Health England in lauding the benefits of vaping, the EU Directive - tabled by prejudiced self-serving lunatics three years ago - proves that those who screamed for it are on the wrong side of history.

A Government impact assessment has warned that the restrictions set down in the Tobacco Products Directive could drive users back to smoking, as well as hiking the price of e-cigarettes and creating a black market of products that fall outside the new regulations.

The Department of Health fears are revealed the day after the Royal College of Physicians (RCP) issued a report strongly promoting the use of e-cigarettes as a healthier alternative to smoking.

Could? It's quite clear that the TPD will drive many back to smoking. I don't know of many smokers who have switched to e-cigs who didn't start on 24mg nicotine content or higher when they first took up vaping. Even one of the most ardent pro-vaping advocates began with 36mg before reducing and getting into the alternative.

Let's be clear here, the TPD's 20mg limit (which will more likely be a top level of 18mg due to companies being terrified of fines for straying over) can only possibly result in more smokers finding e-cigs unsatisfactory and continuing to smoke. What's more, there are many vapers using 24mg and beyond for whom the experience will now be less satisfying than smoking so they will return to buying tobacco.

So determined are ASH to legitimise the pointless and absurd attack on 'Big Tobacco' that plain packaging represents, that they are happy to kick vaping in front of an express train. I know I say this a lot, but it proves categorically that the tobacco control industry has no care about health whatsoever, should be in prison, and will hopefully be going to hell for eternity.

The TPD ASH are enthusiastically backing was based on no proper evidence at all, beholden to no public consultation or impact assessment and - as I think we can all remember - avoided scrutiny by our own parliament thanks to the idiocy of Anna Soubry and the oleaginous string-pulling of the DoH's Andrew Black.

68 –An e-cigarette can be smoked for a much longer time without interruption and many more drags can be taken than from a conventional tobacco product.

It's quite clear from that that the court didn't have any idea of the product they were ruling on, and were departing from their remit. E-cigs 'smoked? 'Drags'?

The case was nothing to do with what e-cigs can and can't do, or how they are used, it was supposed to be whether the TPD enhanced or detracted from the free European market and harmonisation of Europe-wide legislation.

On the plus side, yet again e-cigs are exposing corrupt tobacco control liars. After skulking in the shadows, tobacco control industry cockroaches are being held up to the spotlight of disdain and now even dragging the EU and its smug and complacent anti-democratic practices into sharper view as well.